Bone marrow drive registers more than 900

A record-setting 911 Yalies participated in the bone marrow drive held in Commons on Thursday. The tally shatters the University’s 704-person turnout from April 2009, which ultimately generated two matches.

The Yale-hosted drive, led by the football and women’s hockey teams, sought donors for cancer patients worldwide, and particularly Mandi Schwartz ’11, a women’s hockey forward fighting acute myeloid leukemia. After being in remission for the past 11 months, Schwartz learned Monday that her cancer had returned and left this morning to travel to Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, for treatment. Schwartz is still searching for a perfect donor. Without that, her two options are to have a blood-cord transplant or to use an imperfect match.

Individuals who underwent cheek swabs Thursday became members of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Be The Match Registry. In similar drives held recently at other schools, Villanova generated 701 participants, Duquesne 428, Penn 410 and Temple 405 — one of whom ended up being an exact match for the team’s football manager, who has leukemia.